Bilayer Wood Membrane with Aligned Ion Nanochannels for Spontaneous Moist-Electric Generation

Abstract

Water-enabled electricity generation (WEG) technologies are considered to be an attractive and renewable approach to meet energy crisis and environmental pollution globally. However, the existing WEG technologies still face tremendous challenges including high material cost, harmful components, and specific environmental requirements. Herein, a high-performance wood-based moisture-enabled electric generator (WMEG) is fabricated. Natural wood is cut perpendicular to the tree growth direction and engineered by simple chemical modification. The obtained bilayer wood membrane has robust mechanical framework with aligned ion nanochannels, abundant dissociated functional groups, and spontaneous water adsorption in the air. At the relative humidity of 85%, one WMEG can generate a voltage of 0.57 V. The device can also effectively sense biological water information as a self-powered sensor. The biophile design contributes a practical moist-electric generation strategy that offers clean energy, especially for undeveloped and disaster-relief regions where electricity is limited by high cost or crippled power facilities.

Biomimetic polyelectrolyte-gradient hydrogel electricity generator: a green and portable energy source

“…However, the moisture generator must rely on moisture to activate and function, while our device can directly generate electricity through a pre-set ion concentration difference, thus getting rid of the limitation of moisture. 40…”

Advances and Challenges for Hydrovoltaic Intelligence

“…Under a relative humidity change (ΔRH) of 70%, the electric outputs of 0.25 V and 15 nA were reliably generated by a device with an area of 1.5 cm 2 . In 2022, Cai et al produced a high-performance wood-based MEG device . The natural balsa wood was designed as a bilayer structure with the top (anion layer) and the bottom (cation-layer) for generating mobile ions.…”

“…In 2022, Cai et al produced a high-performance wood-based MEG device. 126 The natural balsa wood was designed as a bilayer structure with the top (anion layer) and the bottom (cationlayer) for generating mobile ions. These works offer low-cost biodegradable material fabrication methods for hydrovoltaic generators, displaying a possibility for some practical applications.…”

A Flexible Tough Hydrovoltaic Coating for Wearable Sensing Electronics

“…Among them, DOI: 10.1002/adma.202304099 continuously generating electricity from the direct interaction between evaporationinduced waterflow and nanochannels surface without chemical reaction is regarded as an evaporation-induced hydrovoltaic effect. [2,4,5] Due to the features of spontaneity, sustainability, almost unlimited resources, and green, [6] evaporationinduced hydrovoltaic effect has attracted extensive attention and strategies have been proposed to improve the energy conversion capability, including structure design, [7][8][9][10] material properties regulation [11][12][13] and even thermal management. [14,15] In fact, the electric double layer (EDL) theory, the cornerstone of hydrovoltaic effect, indicates that the output voltage signal of hydrovoltaic device is dependent on the solution ion concentration, [16,17] which makes it possible to construct a self-powered ion sensor in addition to energy harvest.…”